The Occupy Wall Street movement, full of outrage about what it hates yet nearly devoid of details about what it prefers, deserves credit for drawing attention to the only fault line in our politics that matters: Class Warfare.

Headlines last week swelled with concern over the “richest one percent” raking in their largest share of total income since 1928. Before OWS arrived, mainstream media rhetoric regarding the “rich” didn’t specifically segregate them into a sinister ghetto where “99 percenters” don’t dwell.

It’s no accident “envy” is among the deadly sins: Basic human nature means a lot of people buy into an overpowering urge to bring the wealthy down to their level. Taking sides is more comfortable when the picture shows a very tiny elite you’ll likely never meet holding its thumb on the prosperity scale. That’s what OWS did with the manufactured “99 vs. 1” distinction. An ostensibly objective media swallowed it.

A lot of more meaningful facts got lost.

Consider instead dividing Americans up on an “80 vs. 1” ratio. The average taxpayer in the top one percent of income earners will pay a $514,144 to the IRS in 2013. For those of us in the middle 20 percent - with an average income of $46,562 - we’ll pay just $6,436 to the federal tax man. If the middle-income taxpayer is getting squeezed, then the alleged “fat-cat” at the top of the income ladder is paying 80 times his so-called “fair share.”

That’s 35.5 percent of total income. The richest one percent will keep less than two of every three dollars they earn in 2013. It’s the most we have taken from them since 1979.

The typical middle income taxpayer will shovel just 13.8 percent to Uncle Sam, keeping better than 6 of every 7 dollars away from the IRS. The average over the last few decades has been 16 percent.

That tiny one percent at the top pays more than 30 percent of the total tax bill. The middle income group is 20 times larger, yet pays less than 9 percent of the total.

Looking at data for 2010, economist Mark Perry shows the richest one percent paid nearly as much in total federal taxes as did the bottom 95 percent. Yet we don’t speak of the one percent versus the bottom 95.

Incomes for top one-percent fell 36 percent during the last recession. The rest of us “only” went down about 12 percent.

Wealthier people demand more goods and services from less wealthy people. They don’t hide it in mattresses: They invest it, which creates jobs, or they spend it. With one notable general exception - government employees - few of us in the 99 percent work for somebody less wealthy than we are. A climate making the wealthy less so tends to send the damage downhill.

The economy would dip into a recession at the end of 1973, and the downturn would drive the national unemployment rate to 9 percent by 1975, with the Michigan rate going to 12.5 percent. The inflation rate was 11 percent in 1973, and had been just 3 percent two years earlier.

Not surprisingly, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 45 percent of its value during 1973-74. There was a lot less of Wall Street to occupy. Americans were all doing horribly, and historically awesome income equality wasn’t much of a silver lining to celebrate.

Ken Braun was a legislative aide for a Republican lawmaker in the Michigan House and worked for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. He has assisted in a start-up effort to encourage employers to provide economic education to employees, and is currently the director of policy for InformationStation.org. His employer is not responsible for what he says here ... or in Spartan Stadium on game days.